The present application relates to a method of driving a storage device (memory) which has memory cells formed of non-volatile variable resistance elements and in which the operation (erase operation) to change a variable resistance element from a low resistance state to a high resistance state is carried out.
Storage devices of related-art, in particular, storage devices using flash memories may not require electric power to retain stored data, and therefore such storage devices have been widely used in recent years.
In particular, flash memories are typically used for memories in portable terminal devices such as mobile phone units.
Nikkei Electronics, Nov. 18, 2002, page 130, for example, discloses storage devices using the flash memories with a problem in which a data write speed is not so high.